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Officer John Bishop
John Bishop: 'Attributes:' 'Abilities:' 'Merits:' Sworn Officer: 2 ''' You are a Junior Detective, with all of the rights and responsibilities that entails. You are able to arrest and detain people and use reasonable force to uphold the law. '''Resources: 1 (you have a small flat, an old car and a bit of money for socialising at the end of each month, but your family are always in the wings if you need them and you can legitimately claim to be a self-made man.) Trained Observer: 1 Effect: A Trained Observer can spot the smallest anomaly. No detail escapes his notice. With the one-dot version, the character ignores penalties of up to -3 on Perception rolls. Networking (Prostitutes): 1 Effect: In their line of work, police officers interact with a much wider variety of people than most civilians. As such they can gain reputations among certain areas of the community and with certain types of criminals. You also gain a rough idea of how the subculture works. Note however, this merit only applies to groups that a cop will meet in the course of their work. Contacts within Universities or military allies fall under those merits respectively. Mentors are completely separate from this. * “What is in it for me?“ You are somebody who is involved in the subculture occasionally but you are not trusted, like a vice detective people may be willing to talk or provide services but only if they can do so without causing trouble and if you pay something for it (money, perks, offers to keep people off their back etc…). (+1 to all social rolls with that group and you know about the “public faces” of the subculture) Networking (Neighbourhood Watch): 1 *As Above, but neighbourhood watch groups are happy to help you out and call you, but largely it is when they have a problem or they want you to attend a tedious meeting about people leaving trash out for more than a day on the sidewalk. Ally: 2 (Superior officer, old friend of father's) - Your father got on well with some of the older officers in Precinct 13. Including Sgt. Mal Lesperance (the Union rep), Sgt. Arthur Delgado (The night shift desk sergeant), Sgt. Fernando Raia (An older ladies man and a flirt). They will be happy to help you cover a shift, cover for you in an emergency, give advice or even pick up a case that you can't handle. However there's an expectation that you help them out similarly. Through them they have influence with the higher-ups and might be able to help you out of small problems with authority, but their influence is limited. Eidetic Memory: 2 Effect: Your photographic memory is almost perfect. You can remember almost anything you have witnessed or read. Under normal circumstances, you do not need to roll to recall a fact, license plate or face. Under stress, you receive a +2 modifier to any Intelligence + Composure or Intelligence + Skill (Study, for instance, to remember a chemistry fact) roll made to pull something from your memory. Available at character creation only. Encyclopedic Knowledge: 4 Effect: Your character is a veritable font of useful (and sometimes useless) information on a wide variety of topics. Chances are he can come up with an anecdote pertaining to any situation based on something he’s read, witnessed or seen on TV. You can make an Intelligence + Wits roll any time your character is confronted with a situation or phenomenon outside his normal realm of experience. If the roll is successful, he may recall a “factoid” that he’s heard at some point that may shed light on matters. Available at character creation only. Your character has either been soaking up trivia all his life or he hasn't. *Dramatic Failure: Your character ”remembers” something about the situation that is completely inaccurate. “Wait! Wait! I saw something like this in a movie once!” The Storyteller might make Intelligence + Wits rolls on your behalf when a dramatic failure is possible. *Failure: Your character wracks his brain but comes up empty. *Success: Your character remembers a detail or fact that sheds some light on the situation. “You said there was an almond odor? Seems to me I read somewhere that’s a sign of cyanide poisoning.” *Exceptional Success: Your character recalls a number of useful details that provide extensive insight. "Hey, cool - a little candy skull. They make these in Mexico for the Day of the Dead. It's an offering for a loved one who's died. And they say you can't learn anything on TV." Striking Looks: 2 Effect: Your character is exceptionally attractive by modern standards; heads turn and conversations stop when she enters a room. For two dots, your character gets a +1 modifier to all Presence or Manipulation rolls when she attempts to use her looks to entertain, persuade, distract or deceive others. Drawback: The more attractive your character is, the harder it is for her to avoid notice in public. Witnesses to any criminal acts are much more likely to remember your character’s appearance, and easily recognize her in a lineup. Your character is also likely to receive a great degree of unwanted attention in social situations. Fighting Style: Fillipino Martial Arts: 2 Your character is trained in the art of Filipino fighting, which is often called escrima or kali. He may have learned this from an instructor or a family member. Most escrima techniques use weapons and are meant predominantly for self-defense. Dots purchased with this Merit allow access to unique combat maneuvers with blunt weapons. Each maneuver is a prerequisite for the subsequent maneuver. So, your character cannot have “Disarm” until he has “Lock and Block.” These maneuvers and their effects are described below. All maneuvers are based upon the Weaponry Skill. Note that to perform these maneuvers, a character must have at least one blunt weapon in hand. This weapon is potentially one escrima stick (or a pair), but it can be any blunt object shorter than two feet in length. If the character wields two weapons, he still assumes the –2 penalty for off-hand attacks. Once the character reaches the fourth and final level of this style, he can then choose to use any of the maneuvers without weapons. At this stage he learns the “empty hand” techniques of escrima. Lock and Block (•): With this move, your character uses an adversary’s momentum against her. If you succeed on a Strength + Weaponry roll, your character captures an opponent’s attacking arm in his own and gains a grapple over her (for grappling rules, see p. 157, World of Darkness Rulebook). You may add your character’s Defense to the Strength + Weaponry roll, as he is technically making a defensive maneuver. However, if you choose to add his Defense to this attack, you may not apply his Defense against any incoming attacks that turn. If he has already applied his Defense, he may still utilize this maneuver, but he does not get to add his Defense to the roll. Disarm (••): This allows your character to capture an incoming attack and bring his own weapon down upon a foe’s forearm, potentially forcing the enemy to drop her weapon. (Note that this is different than the Disarm Merit.) To enact this maneuver, make a normal attack roll (Dexterity + Weaponry). Compare the successes on this roll against the opponent’s Stamina. If the successes are equal to or exceed her Stamina score, she drops the weapon. This attack does cause damage to the opponent, as well. Take the successes gained on the attack roll and halve them (round up). The opponent takes this damage, bashing. Unknown Merit (5) As a consequence of exposure to a strange circle, Bishop walked away with a tendency to see strange things out of the corner of his eyes. Ghosts and monsters walk the world and he can not just see them but gain some strange insight into the future from their presence. Although he can't yet fully understand or control it. Over time he has come to recognize some of these powers. The Mystery merit: *Shadow Sight 4 - He can see things that others can not, most of the time he only catches glimpses of the world beyond, ghosts or spirits or stranger things. *Automatic Writing 2 - Sometimes when he fixates on a particular question and when he is sufficiently distracted, he may find that he has drawn on things unconciously. The doodles often (but not always) have some enigmatic meaning or provide some clue to solving the mystery in question. *Easy Ride 2 - He sometimes gets strange sensations, but nothing has ever come of them. 'Family & Background:' Bishop has an elderly mother and four sisters, all living in the Midway area. He grew up on a small farm in Canada, just large enough to keep the family, though money was always tight. His father, Matthew, died when Bishop was twelve. The two of them went on a father-son hunting trip deep into the forests of northern Alberta, camping wild for a fortnight. His last memory of the trip is of his father handing him a rifle and showing him how to shoot it... The next thing he remembers is being airlifted out, with medics working on his father, bleeding from a single gunshot wound to the chest. His father died in transit. Bishop's mother, Mary, sold the farm immediately (on unfavourable terms) and moved the entire family to Midway. She's never treated her son as if he was in any way responsible for his father's death, always referring to it as “the incident”, but Bishop blames himself and has had an overwhelming sense of guilt ever since. He's never been sure why his mother sold the farm so quickly, or moved the family so far away. He does know that she received a call from the dying Matthew via satellite phone, but all she'd ever say is that he told her it was a tragic accident. He can tell she's holding something back, and has always assumed he was responsible. His youngest sister, Marianne, is 16 and trouble. She was always “daddy's little princess” until the accident, and didn't adjust well to the move. She resents her brother, and constantly gets herself into trouble (usually involving boys and/or petty crime) that he has to bail her out of. His favourite sister, Susanne, is 21 and training to be a doctor. Unfortunately she's labouring under the burden of student loans, as the family can't afford the tuition, and Bishop tries to help out where he can. Joanne is 23, beautiful, and married to a wealthy businessman. They're both equally selfish and unlikeable. Joanne cheats on her husband regularly, and if he ever finds out, she'll be out on the street. The eldest, Arianne, is 24 and working as a kindergarten teacher. She doesn't earn much and she's a shopaholic, which is an unfortunate combination... As the eldest, Bishop feels a responsibility to look after them all in his father's stead, which sometimes feels like a full-time job in its own right. His mother is now in her mid fifties, but old before her time. She works part time in the city library, and has never remarried. 6 Months Later: In the 6 months after the disastrous shoot-out in the club, Bishop was the only one to emerge unscathed politically. However he suffered serious burns all over his body. He intends to spend his time recouperating to swat up on subjects needed for the detective exam. Giving him the freedom to investigate and close the many cases in Midway that still haunt him.